And in those years of 15 ago, MO’s Eurospondent Yossef Schvetz was having all the great adventures. In this chapter, he travels to the foreign land of Monza to ride a rare bike that we barely knew existed, yea verily, until we saw our first one a couple months ago at Iconic Motorcycles here in the Land of LaLa. Honda doesn’t lend its engines to boutique manufacturers, but this time it did, and the reason why is all in this gospel according to Yossef, who probably wishes he got residuals. Amen.

2003 Mondial Piega

In which Our Man in Italy approaches a very sharp bend…

By Yossef SchvetzMar. 23, 2003

Exclusivity, yes, let’s talk about it. It was quite a few years back that I had my first and so far, only chance to place my sorry behind on what was supposed to be back then, an indisputable Italian object of desire, plain unobtainium stuff–a Bimota to be exact.After a few laps on a totally unsorted bike, I couldn’t help but wonder how could this, ahem, “gem”, ever make people weak in the knees?

To make things worse, it was during a sport bike comparo and the original Japanese machine powered by the same engine was running rings around the Bimota, no matter how much effort the present factory technicians were putting in to sort the thing out. And the riding position ouch! After that experience I thought I learnt my lesson regarding the worth of a small venture’s slant on building an “exclusive,” but only partially cooked, thoroughbred. And don’t even get me started on this repulsive old-brands revival thing, it’s been getting up to here lately… So here comes this big shot that buys yet another brand name, past glory included, slaps together a fancy frame with a proprietary engine again …read more